Our Opinion: Bruce Rauner’s epic about-face

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The State Journal-Register

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Posted Jan. 12, 2014 at 1:13 AM

Posted Jan. 12, 2014 at 1:13 AM

Bruce Rauner: Candidate for governor, self-proclaimed heir apparent to the GOP nomination and Chicago multimillionaire full of righteous indignation about Springfield, who wears an $18 watch and stays in cheap hotels but can practically self-fund his political campaign.

He wants to run Illinois so badly. And, yet, a lot of pesky questions are getting in his way.

Rauner, a Republican first-time candidate, is facing a heaping helping of criticism over conflicting statements he’s made about his position on minimum wage — a relatively simple, straightforward issue that everyone understands and about which most politicians have a firm, consistent opinion.

Rauner’s opinion, however, is less discernible. Some say he’s a flip-flopper; he says he misspoke. You be the judge.

Illinois’ minimum wage is $8.25 an hour. The national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

At a Dec. 11 candidates’ forum in the Quad Cities, Rauner said he would “advocate moving the Illinois minimum wage back to the national minimum wage.” Translation: lower Illinois’ minimum wage. His comments were unearthed Tuesday, sparking a political backlash and framing Rauner as an elitist trying to take money from low-paid frontline service workers.

In a Thursday column he wrote for the Chicago Tribune, Rauner surprised political observers by backpedaling and suggesting there are conditions under which he would support raising the state’s minimum wage to $10 an hour — an effort already being pushed by Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.

Also on Thursday, Rauner was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying his December remarks were “flippant” and that he did not intend to suggest lowering the state’s minimum wage.

“I never said that. I said we should tie the minimum wage in Illinois to the national minimum wage. I didn’t use numbers. I didn’t use $7.25. I didn’t say any of that,” Rauner told the Sun-Times. “I said I want Illinois competitive with other states.”

And on Friday, the Sun-Times posted a video of Rauner at a Ford County appearance in September, during which said he is “adamantly, adamantly against raising the minimum wage.”

“My view is we already have the second highest unemployment in America. We already have an outrageously high unemployment rate among low-income, poor minority kids in Chicago, in Rockford, in Peoria and East St. Louis,” Rauner said in the video. “And raising the minimum wage is just going to blow them out and take away their jobs. We cannot do this.”

Also in September, Rauner told WMAY-AM radio host Fritz Pfister “it’s a very bad idea, it’s a terrible idea” to raise minimum wage.

“Raising the minimum wage will only devastate job opportunities for young people and lower-income folks that need jobs first and foremost.”

It would be safe for Rauner to say he is against raising the minimum wage — it’s a standard conservative point of view. But his knee-jerk thrashing back and forth between positions has to stop.

Page 2 of 2 - Rauner should take a deep breath and get serious about giving voters genuine, truthful answers about his position on the issues facing Illinois. A Rauner spokesman on Friday told The State Journal-Register that Rauner “has learned his lesson about the need to give well thought out responses to the issue of raising minimum wage.”

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time Rauner has been less than forthcoming with answers about where he stands on matters. Last year, he avoided responding to questions about his position on motorcycle helmet laws, even as he was showing up at events on his motorcycle while wearing a helmet. And he outright dodged questions about his half-million-dollar donation to the far-right-leaning “free market” Illinois Policy Institute, telling SJ-R reporter Bernard Schoenburg he didn’t recall the amount and when pressed told Schoenburg, “I love you, man.” His campaign later clarified the amount of the donation.

The problem with Rauner seems to be that he wants to answer questions on his own terms when he is good and ready. That’s not the way politics works, as he is learning.

With so much of Illinois’ future riding on the 2014 gubernatorial election, the public deserves candidates who can provide honest, straightforward answers on their feet — not candidates whose answers first require vetting by a poll or by advisers.